This invention relates generally to measurement systems and, more particularly, to methods and systems for measuring cutting tools.
Cutting tools are an essential component used in manufacturing aircraft parts, such as engine blades. At least some known cutting tools are manufactured with complex geometric shapes and sharp and/or curved edges. As such, maintaining quality control of cutting tools during their fabrication may be essential to controlling a quality of components manufactured using the cutting tools. Specifically, if a plurality of tools is used to manufacture a plurality of identical engine blades, it is essential each of the cutting tools be fabricated with accurately controlled contours and dimensions. However, because of known manufacturing techniques, often it is common for known cutting tools to be manufactured with dimensions and contours that are not always adequately inspected or controlled. Accordingly, at least some known engine blades may be manufactured with different dimensions and contours.
For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a design model for use in manufacturing a cutting tool and two exemplary cutting tools manufactured based on the design model. More specifically, FIG. 1(a) illustrates a cutting tool manufactured with a first grinding machine, FIG. 1(b) illustrates a cutting tool manufactured with a second grinding machine and FIG. 1(c) illustrates the design model for the cutting tool. As seen in FIG. 1, cutting tools are often fabricated with contours and dimensions that differ from the design model. More specifically, a cutting tool manufactured with a first grinding machine may include contours and dimensions that differ from a cutting tool manufactured with a second grinding machine.
Accordingly, it is common to inspect cutting tools to ensure uniformity. More specifically, often parameters of each cutting tool are measured and verified against a standard to ensure conformity with the design model. However, known measuring systems only measure the cutting tool using two dimensions, in that known measuring systems are limited to measuring only a few parameters of the cutting tool and one characteristic at a time. As such the measurements may be unreliable and time consuming. In addition, because known measuring systems generally require several manual operations, reproducibility of the measurements may be limited.